Current Backus Lab Members

Benjamin Backus, Ph.D Professor Backus is the principal investigator at the Visual Perception Lab. He earned his PhD studying depth perception at UC Berkeley, then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, to study brain mechanisms of stereo vision. This is his third year at Penn. He doesn’t miss California nearly as much as he thought he would. “There are so many interesting people at Penn, and Philly’s great. I love it here. And what’s with all the blue sky? I thought it was supposed to be gray all the time.”




Qi Haijiang Haijiang is a PhD student in the Bioengineering Dept. He has years of experience in computer science. "I am more curious about human brains than those emotionless eletronic devices." So he likes perception research, doing both experimental studies and theoretical models about adaptations.




Rebecca Stone Rebecca is a PhD student in Neuroscience. She has an ScB in Mathematics-Computer Science from Brown University. Between college and grad school, Rebecca worked in Boston writing natural language processing software. Trying to imitate a cognitive function in software inspires a real appreciation of the brain's skills. Rebecca is spending the summer working on a human fMRI study of perceptual metamers.




Jesse Frumkin Jesse Frumkin is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in biology. He has worked in the Speech and Communication Lab at MIT's Laboratory for Electronics and spent two years as a software developer. He is currently studying interdisciplinary science as part of the University of Pennsylvania's Masters of Liberal Arts program.




Daniel Matza-Brown Dan recently graduated from Penn with a B.A. in Cognitive Science. He was born and raised in Oakland, CA. He does much of the lab's programming, and also helps out with experimental design. His current projects include the examination of depth adaptation after-effects, and the mechanization of the lab's haploscope.




David Marshall




Samuel Wyche Sam is an undergraduate at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. His major is Biology with a minor in mathematics. Sam is a resident of the Philadelphia metropolitan area. He has an interest in all facets of perception.




Richard Pater Richard is an undergraduate majoring in Computer Science and Engineering and minoring in Psychology and Mathematics. He lives in Wilmington, DE. Richard is working in the lab spending half of his time doing research and the other half being a general lab assistant.




Harlan Flagg Harlan is an undergraduate Electrical Engineer at Penn with minors in both Math and Mechanical Engineering. He comes from the beautiful land of Los Angeles and he says "dude" way too much.

Backus Lab Alumni

Ipek Oruc Ipek recently started as a post-doc in the Backus lab. She did her Ph.D work on spatial vision and depth perception at New York University. Before that she earned her B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science at Bogazici University, Istanbul. Her research interests include cue-combination, second-order vision, depth perception, letter recognition, and adaptation.




Michael Brunswick Mike is a graduate student working towards an M.S.E. in Computer and Information Science here at Penn. Also at Penn, he earned his B.S.E. in Computer Science in Engineering, with a minor in Cognitive Science. Mike got started at the Visual Perception Lab doing an independent study project in slant perception with funds from University Scholars. Now, he is managing a project to build a stereo wall to display realistic images in response to head movement.




Brian Abram Brian graduated from Penn in 2003 with a B.A. in Cognitive Science, focusing on a broad range of topics from computational models of human cognition to perception and philosophy of mind. His current project is the Stereo Wall demonstration, studying the cue effects of motion parallax.




Ben Rosenau Ben graduated from Penn in 2003 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in the Biological Basis of Behavior. He became involved in the lab originally through his undergraduate coursework, and is continuing here through the summer. Ben hails from Allentown, PA.




Nirav Shelat Nirav is a rising junior in the Wharton School of Business concentrating in Health Care Systems and Finance, and is concurrently fufilling his pre-med requirements. He likes to play basketball and tennis, and enjoys distance running. Other hobbies include map collecting and reading about military history. Currently Nirav serves as an administrative assistant to the faculty on the Perception floor.




Patrick Connolly Patrick did a rotation in Ben's lab during his first year of graduate school in the department of neuroscience. Patrick got his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from St. Louis University. Before starting the neuroscience program, he spent a year at Penn studying schizophrenia. Patrick enjoys football, hockey, all types of music, good food, and working with Leon, Ben, Xenophon, and Dan.




Leon Simms Leon did a rotation in Ben's lab during his first year of graduate school in the department of neuroscience. Leon got a double major in biology and psychology from Mount Saint Mary's College in Maryland. Before coming to Penn he worked at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research studying the co-infection models of HIV and malaria using microarrays. He is interested in researching schizophrenia, depression, and drug abuse. Working with Ben, Xenophon and Dan is great, but Patrick sometimes gets on his nerves.




Xenophon Zabulis Xenophon spent two semesters in the lab as a post-doc. He worked on various projects, including the starry night stimulus.




John Rufus Frazer Rufus spent a year working for Ben and the University as the lab technician, research assistant, secretary, and whatever-else-is-needed guy. He graduated from Swarthmore College, where he majored in math and religion.




Mark Nolt Mark did a rotation in Ben's lab during his first year of graduate school in the department of neuroscience. He worked with Ben in the setup of the haploscope, which is used to simulate three-dimensional images for vision experiments.




Jimmy Sastra Jimmy is an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in bio-engineering. He is also interested in visual cognitive science and loves to trip out on funky visual illusions. He was born and raised in Holland, spent time in Japan, and now resides in Philadelphia. Like Ben he doesn't miss California all that much. But maybe that's because he has never lived there. Jimmy's projects included using Matlab to devise a method that automates the creation of red-green 3d anaglyph images.




Henry Lai Henry is an undergraduate at Penn who is majoring in Digital Media Design. His duties at the lab included web design, programming, and obsessing over Britney Spears. As for life after Penn, his only thoughts are to travel abroad for a year and to possibly attend a graduate school for art. He also plans on starting a new trend by sporting cheap cardboard 3D glasses everywhere he goes.